Great Loop 2022: Day 18: Shore Day at Wilmington NC

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April 8, 2022: A walk around Wilmington NC, including a brisk River Walk, shopping finds, a giant sloth skeleton, German food, and a good afternoon rest.

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We weren’t bothered during the night, although more than once I felt the boat rock as if we’d been boarded. The Waterway Guide reviews for this marina had mentioned one boat being boarded during the night, so I slept light. At one point, I got up for a look out the window and a really hard listen. But it was nothing.

The Power Walk

I woke with my back aching — it really hadn’t stopped since North Myrtle Beach but the pain was tolerable — and decided to try walking it out. So after my morning coffee, I put on my hiking shoes and set out on a brisk walk along the River Walk Trail, which runs along the shoreline right past our dock. I knew that if I headed upriver, I would eventually get to the other marina. My goal was to walk a mile each way with my preferred “brisk” pace of 1 mile in less than 20 minutes (per my watch, which keeps track of such things). If you do the math, that’s about 3 miles per hour. I don’t like walking for exercise — I think it’s boring — so the more I can get in an hour, the happier I am.

Here’s a look upriver along the waterfront from the dock we were parked at.

(I should take a moment to define the types of walking I do, since I actually do quite a bit when I’m out and about. Strolling is what I do when I’m just moving from point to point, usually to observe something. Shopping, museum walking, and garden or house tours all fall into the strolling category. I don’t consider this exercise. Walking is what I do when I move point to point while in the process of getting things done. I walk when I do chores around my house and garden or walk with a companion that doesn’t want to (or can’t) walk quickly. This is exercise, but certainly nothing to brag about. It’s interesting to note that on a good gardening/yard work day, I can get 10,000 steps without leaving my property.Brisk walking is my exercise walking. The only purpose is to get miles and steps recorded while getting my heart rate up a bit. I normally do this alone, but my friend Janet makes a good companion because she also wants real exercise in a walk. I’ve learned to use my watch to judge whether I’ve achieved a brisk walk; the pace should be 1 mile in less than 20 minutes — and the less time, the better.)

The trail at around 7 AM had a smattering of other walkers, alone and with or without dogs, as well as a few joggers. Most were friendly with a voiced or nodded good morning or hello. The air was fresh and clean, the morning was one of those when you felt happy to be alive. I kept my pace up, despite the pain in my back, and was rewarded by a heart rate so elevated that I closed my watch’s exercise ring just after turning around to go back. (If you’re not familiar with fitness tracking watches like an Apple Watch, it means getting X minutes of “exercise” — the X is 30 on my setup.) That got me wondering a little about whether the pain was affecting my vitals; my exercise ring is notoriously difficult for me to close. But maybe my brisk walk was brisk enough for the watch programmers?

I did get as far as the marina, which was about a mile up the river. I think there are actually two marinas there. One was full of boats and even two pairs of house barges. The other was nearly empty; it may have belonged to the man we’d met the day before who told us it was closed due to insurance problems. On the way back, I noticed someone curled up in a sleeping bag on the upper deck of one of the two house barges closest to the River Walk; I suspect the boat was unoccupied and a homeless person was taking advantage of the absentee owner.

House barges at the marina. These were two of four nearly identical ones.

On the way back, I stopped at a bagel place about two blocks from the boat where I picked up a sesame bagel with cream cheese and lox for me and an everything bagel for Capt John. I had breakfast with a second cup of coffee back at the boat. My back was still sore and I popped a few ibuprofen to take the edge off. (Later in the week, a concerned Twitter friend would warn me about the side effects of ibuprofen that, when I read up on them, were disturbing enough to cut my intake.)

Another Walk in Town

John and I left on another walk at around 10 AM. He wanted to see the skeleton of the giant sloth found in the area that was on display at the Cape Fear Museum. His granddaughter is apparently a sloth lover. So we set off on foot to Point 8 on the tourism map. It was about six blocks from the boat. We got there and there was no museum. That’s when we realized that we wanted Star 8 on the map. That was about 14 blocks in the opposite direction.

So we set off, detouring briefly through the Cotton Exchange, a shopping center that was in a renovated cotton export business building. I went into an artist co-op where I hit the jackpot, buying two beautifully made seam rippers (a sewing tool) for my sister and myself and a handmade purse just the size and price I was looking for.

We chose a zig-zag path to our destination, finally walking along Market Street. We stopped at an old church along the way, and John tried the doors, hoping to get a look from the inside of the stained glass windows. But the doors were locked. (I didn’t think churches were ever locked.)

Eventually — or finally, as far as my back was concerned — we reached the Cape Fear Museum. The giant sloth skeleton was on display right inside the door. The damn thing is huge. I took a photo for John of him standing right under its claws. I don’t care how slow a sloth is. If I saw that thing coming at me, I’d run for the hills.

The giant sloth really was a giant; it stood nearly two stories tall.

After the sloth photo shoot, we took a walk though the museum, which had mostly history exhibits. Wilmington played a huge part in the Civil War (as I believe I’ve said elsewhere) because of its railroad connections to the rest of the south and the difficulty the Union forces were having keeping the Cape Fear River blockaded. There were the usual collection of dioramas and plexiglas-faced cases full of artifacts. I think the museum did an excellent job displaying items of interest to adults alongside similar displayed designed for kids. It made it really easy for families to view the museum without making it too dumbed-down for parents and still interesting for kids.

One of the things I liked best about the museum is it extremely detailed model of the Port of Wilmington in the late 1800s. It was a huge display surrounded by plexiglass.

When we were finished and I was totally exhausted, John suggested we go down to the German Cafe for lunch. I was not happy about this, mostly because it meant walking all the way back to Point 8 on the map, 14 blocks away. I would have preferred to find something along Market Street, much closer to the boat. But he had his heart set on German food and I like German food, too, so off we went. At least it was mostly downhill.

I had some sort of pork schnitzel for lunch and was disappointed that spaetzel were not available. John had the wurst plate special. The food was very good and the iced tea was good and cold. I felt refreshed after lunch.

But not refreshed enough to continue exploring Wilmington. John wanted to visit the Wilmington Railroad Museum, which wasn’t far away but was farther away from the boat. I’d had enough. My back hurt and I was tired. I’d already closed my exercise ring twice that day — and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I ever did that. We went our separate ways.

I went back to the boat via Market Street, for another look at what was going on in town. It had become very busy indeed.

Moving the Boat

Back at the boat, I went right to my bunk and stretched out for a good, long rest. I think I might have dozed off — I’m writing this a week after the fact and honestly can’t remember. But I do remember John getting back around 3 PM and reporting about the train museum, which he said was very good.

We were sitting at the table with our heads buried in our laptops when someone called into us from the dock. It turned out to be two employees from the town. John went out to chat with them and I heard everything from the inside. The gist of it was that we weren’t allowed to stay overnight at any of the town docks. He tried telling them what he’d been told about no one caring if we were there overnight, but they weren’t having any of it. They said that if we tried to stay overnight, the cops would chase us off.

So we moved the boat. That meant unplugging, untying, and casting off — with the river current doing its damnedest to keep us on the dock. John had called the marina owner guy and he told us to move up to a dock a little farther up the river. We found one without a No Overnight Docking sign and pulled up to it. We tied up. We plugged in.

The power didn’t work. The power pedestal had been turned off.

This was going to be an annoyance. You see, Carver 36 might have 720 watts of solar power on its roof to keep its batteries charged, but its inverter was not going to run the electric stove we needed to cook the pasta for dinner. (Will someone please explain to me why some boats have electric stoves?) That mean starting up the 2.2KW Honda generator on the back deck. And listening to it.

If you’ve read any of my blog posts about camping, you know how much I hate the sound of generators. Occasionally, I do have to run one for my setup, but I try everything I can to avoid it and I hate when I have to camp near someone who runs it for hours at a time.

But it didn’t seem to bother John, who started it up to run the air conditioning even before it was time to cook dinner. It was not going to be a quiet evening.

Evening

Dinner was the sausage and sauce John had made in the crock pot during the previous day’s cruise. He reheated about half of it in the microwave while I was trying to cook the pasta on the stove. The generator was not happy and shifted into high gear every time John gave the microwave another 30 seconds. Finally, dinner was cooked and hot. We served it up and sat down with the generator still running outside.

Much to my relief, John got up and turned it off.

After dinner, we talked about our plans for the next day. Apparently, Wilmington’s Azalea Festival was that weekend and there would be a parade the next day. There would also be a Sidewalk Fair, which sounded a lot like the kind of artist events I attend. John wanted to see the parade; I wanted to see the Sidewalk Fair. We decided we’d leave around midday after the parade was over. We had a four-hour trip back down to Southport and wanted to be at the marina before sunset.

Plan made, we both headed off into our cabins for the night.